New Book is A Real-Life Thriller About Rare Book Theft at New York Public Library

A new book from a University of Illinois expert in crimes against rare books tells the real-life story of the biggest score in rare-book theft and the dogged hunt for the perpetrators by the special investigator of the New York Public Library.

There have always been thieves stealing from libraries, but this was different,” McDade said. “This was – and probably still is – the all-time worst theft of rare books in the U.S.”

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According to the book, which was published by Oxford University Press, the price of rare books in the 1920s, particularly in the “Americana” genre, started to skyrocket, creating a unique opportunity for unscrupulous booksellers and thieves desperate enough to raid libraries.

“It was the boom years of the Jazz Age, and you had the J.P. Morgans, the Andrew Carnegies, the Henry Huntingtons and the like buying rare books to stock in their libraries,” McDade said. “Thanks to this book-buying bubble, all of the public libraries in the Northeast now had books on their shelves that were pretty valuable.”

With the value of first-edition books going through the roof, a ring of thieves on Book Row – a six-block sliver in lower Manhattan about 20 blocks south of the library – conspired to make some money by raiding libraries and then selling the stolen books to rare booksellers, some of whom were willing to turn a blind eye to the dubious provenance of the prized antiquities.

Gary Price (gprice@mediasourceinc.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Before launching INFOdocket, Price and Shirl Kennedy were the founders and senior editors at ResourceShelf and DocuTicker for 10 years. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com, and is currently a contributing editor at Search Engine Land.